In Megatrends, published in 1982, John Naisbitt and I talked about the birth of the Information Economy. For millennia, the West’s developed economies had been based on agriculture. That was how people made their living. Then came the Industrial Revolution. Sometime in the 1960s or 1970s, we argued, another, more subtle upheaval occurred: More and more people held jobs in which they created, processed or manipulated information.

By 1982, the Information Economy was up and running, but it was still a controversial idea. “Information?” some folks scoffed. “There can’t possibly be any economic value in that.” But by the 1990s, the Information Economy had blossomed into the age of high technology, now a trillion-dollar industry.

Today we are on the brink of another extraordinary revolution. The Information Age is already over and an exciting new epoch is taking its place.

Remember, the key point is this: When wealth is derived from a new source — say information rather than industry — a new economic era is born.

"We protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities, and if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that ourparents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us. We're not protecting nature for nature's sake. We're protecting it because it enriches us, yes, it enriches our economy and we ignore that at our peril. But it is also enriching us aesthetically, recreationally, culturally, historically and spiritually. Human beings have other appetites besides money. And ifwe don't feed them, we're not going to grow up…we're not going to become the kind of beings that our creator intended us to become."

"Money is not the root of all evil.....ignorance is the root of all evil. People do cruel and foolish things for money because they feel oppressed by a sense of lack. If people knew their power to generate wealth, they would never fight or hurt each other over money."

"If you have good wealth mentality.... you will generate wealth wherever you go. Even if you lose money temporarily, your wealth mentality will attract it again. If you have a lack mentality, no matter how much you receive or what financial opportunities come your way, wealth will evade you or, if it comes, it won't last."